Magic Hour credit packs: $12 for 5,000 or $149.99 for 80,000

Magic Hour's credit packs cost between $0.0024 and $0.0019 per credit ($12 for 5,000 up to $149.99 for 80,000), while its annual plans work out to about $0.001 per credit by my division, so packs cost roughly twice as much per credit. If you will keep using the service, a plan is cheaper; packs are for one-off top-ups.

What the page lists

Magic Hour lists Creator at $12 a month ($19 monthly) with 144K credits annually, Pro at $25 ($39 monthly) with 300K, and Business at $66 ($99 monthly) with 840K, plus four credit packs from 5,000 credits at $12 to 80,000 credits at $149.99. It says API access is offered to all users with the same features and usage levels as your plan, and packs include watermark-free exports and commercial use rights.

A caveat on the plan math

The plan rows assume the page's credit figures are per year and the monthly price is billed annually, which is how I read it. If you pay month to month, the Creator cost is $19 for 12,000 credits, about $0.00158. Check the checkout screen.

How Sume differs

Sume has no credits. It reserves a dollar amount at submit, at provider list times 1.25, from a prepaid workspace balance, and refunds failed jobs. There are no packs to arbitrage and no annual commitment, and no plan discount either. If a job fails for lack of balance you get 402 insufficient_credits.

Steps: choose between packs and plan

• Estimate credits per month from your last job costs.
• If monthly use exceeds the pack-to-plan crossover, pick the plan.
• If use is sporadic, buy one pack.
• If you want one dollar balance across video, image and audio, use the USD model on Sume.

What Sume does not do

I found no volume discount for bigger prepaid balances in the Sume docs I read, and nothing like Magic Hour's annual-commitment discount.

Break-even between a pack and a plan

Using the page's annual figures, Creator costs $144 a year for 144K credits. The same 144K credits in the cheapest pack would cost $345.60 (28.8 packs of 5,000 at $12) and in the largest packs two packs at $149.99, $299.98 for 160K credits. So a plan saves roughly $156 to $202 a year if you use all of it. If you use less than half, a pack can win. Count your real usage before you commit to a year.

API access on every plan

Magic Hour states that API access is available to all users with the same features and usage levels as the plan. That means you can start on the cheapest plan and automate against it. Sume works the same way in one respect: any workspace key can call the API, with the plan setting rate budgets, and the balance paying for jobs. Both avoid gating the API behind an enterprise sale.

Verdict

Magic Hour packs are a convenience premium. Use the plan if you can commit, or pay per job on a balance where discounts do not apply and usage is irregular.